Bealby; A Holiday. Герберт Уэллс

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СКАЧАТЬ Bealby made no articulate answer.

      “Just stand there for a minute,” said Mr. Mergleson, “and when I’m at libbuty I’ll run through your duties.” And almost ostentatiously he gave himself up to the enjoyment of his cup of tea.

      Three other gentlemen in deshabille sat at table with Mr. Mergleson. They regarded young Bealby with attention, and the youngest, a red-haired, barefaced youth in shirt-sleeves and a green apron was moved to a grimace that was clearly designed to echo the scowl on young Bealby’s features.

      The fury that had been subdued by a momentary awe of Mr. Mergleson revived and gathered force. Young Bealby’s face became scarlet, his eyes filled with tears and his mind with the need for movement. After all—he wouldn’t stand it. He turned round abruptly and made for the door.

      “Where’n earth you going to?” cried Mr. Mergleson.

      “He’s shy!” cried the second footman.

      “Steady on!” cried the first footman and had him by the shoulder in the doorway.

      “Lemme go!” howled the new recruit, struggling. “I won’t be a blooming servant. I won’t.”

      “Here!” cried Mr. Mergleson, gesticulating with his teaspoon, “bring ’im to the end of the table there. What’s this about a blooming servant?”

      Bealby, suddenly blubbering, was replaced at the end of the table.

      “May I ask what’s this about a blooming servant?” asked Mr. Mergleson.

      Sniff and silence.

      “Did I understand you to say that you ain’t going to be a blooming servant, young Bealby?”

      “Yes,” said young Bealby.

      “Thomas,” said Mr. Mergleson, “just smack ’is ’ed. Smack it rather ’ard. …”

      Things too rapid to relate occurred. “So you’d bite, would you?” said Thomas. …

      “Ah!” said Mr. Mergleson. “Got ’im! That one!” …

      “Just smack ’is ’ed once more,” said Mr. Mergleson. …

      “And now you just stand there, young man, until I’m at libbuty to attend to you further,” said Mr. Mergleson, and finished his tea slowly and eloquently. …

      The second footman rubbed his shin thoughtfully.

      “If I got to smack ’is ’ed much,” he said, “ ’e’d better change into his slippers.”

      “Take him to ’is room,” said Mr. Mergleson getting up. “See ’e washes the grief and grubbiness off ’is face in the handwash at the end of the passage and make him put on his slippers. Then show ’im ’ow to lay the table in the steward’s room.”

§ 4

       Table of Contents

      The duties to which Bealby was introduced struck him as perplexingly various, undesirably numerous, uninteresting and difficult to remember, and also he did not try to remember them very well because he wanted to do them as badly as possible and he thought that forgetting would be a good way of starting at that. He was beginning at the bottom of the ladder; to him it fell to wait on the upper servants, and the green baize door at the top of the service staircase was the limit of his range. His room was a small wedge-shaped apartment under some steps leading to the servants’ hall, lit by a window that did not open and that gave upon the underground passage. He received his instructions in a state of crumpled mutinousness, but for a day his desire to be remarkably impossible was more than counterbalanced by his respect for the large able hands of the four man-servants, his seniors, and by a disinclination to be returned too promptly to the gardens. Then in a tentative manner he broke two plates and got his head smacked by Mr. Mergleson himself. Mr. Mergleson gave a staccato slap quite as powerful as Thomas’s but otherwise different. The hand of Mr. Mergleson was large and fat and he got his effects by dash, Thomas’s was horny and lingered. After that young Bealby put salt in the teapot in which the housekeeper made tea. But that he observed she washed out with hot water before she put in the tea. It was clear that he had wasted his salt, which ought to have gone into the kettle.

      Next time—the kettle.

      Beyond telling him his duties almost excessively nobody conversed with young Bealby during the long hours of his first day in service. At midday dinner in the servants’ hall, he made one of the kitchen-maids giggle by pulling faces intended to be delicately suggestive of Mr. Mergleson, but that was his nearest approach to disinterested human intercourse.

      When the hour for retirement came—“Get out of it. Go to bed, you dirty little Kicker,” said Thomas. “We’ve had about enough of you for one day”—young Bealby sat for a long time on the edge of his bed weighing the possibilities of arson and poison. He wished he had some poison. Some sort of poison with a medieval manner, poison that hurts before it kills. Also he produced a small penny pocket-book with a glazed black cover and blue edges. He headed one page of this “Mergleson” and entered beneath it three black crosses. Then he opened an account to Thomas, who was manifestly destined to be his principal creditor. Bealby was not a forgiving boy. At the village school they had been too busy making him a good Churchman to attend to things like that. There were a lot of crosses for Thomas.

      And while Bealby made these sinister memoranda downstairs Lady Laxton—for Laxton had bought a baronetcy for twenty thousand down to the party funds and a tip to the whip over the Peptonized Milk flotation—Lady Laxton, a couple of floors above Bealby’s ruffled head mused over her approaching week-end party. It was an important week-end party. The Lord Chancellor of England was coming. Never before had she had so much as a member of the Cabinet at Shonts. He was coming, and do what she would she could not help but connect it with her very strong desire to see the master of Shonts in the clear scarlet of a Deputy Lieutenant. Peter would look so well in that. The Lord Chancellor was coming, and to meet him and to circle about him there were Lord John Woodenhouse and Slinker Bond, there were the Countess of Barracks and Mrs. Rampound Pilby, the novelist, with her husband Rampound Pilby, there was Professor Timbre, the philosopher, and there were four smaller (though quite good) people who would run about very satisfactorily among the others. (At least she thought they would run about very satisfactorily amongst the others, not imagining any evil of her cousin Captain Douglas.)

      All this good company in Shonts filled Lady Laxton with a pleasant realization of progressive successes but at the same time one must confess that she felt a certain diffidence. In her heart of hearts she knew she had not made this party. It had happened to her. How it might go on happening to her, she did not know, it was beyond her control. She hoped very earnestly that everything would pass off well.

      The Lord Chancellor was as big a guest as any she had had. One must grow as one grows, but still—being easy and friendly with him would be, she knew, a tremendous effort. Rather like being easy and friendly with an elephant. She was not good at conversation. The task of interesting people taxed her and puzzled her. …

      It was Slinker Bond, the whip, who had arranged the whole business—after, it must be confessed, a hint from Sir Peter. Laxton had complained that the government were neglecting this part of the country. “They ought to show up more than they do in the county,” said СКАЧАТЬ